So What Did The Mars Rover Find On Mars? You Tell Us

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity cut a wheel scuff mark into a wind-formed ripple at the "Rocknest" site to give researchers a better opportunity to examine the particle-size distribution of the material forming the ripple. The rover's right Navigation camera took this image of the scuff mark on the mission's 57th Martian day.

What do you think the soil samples put inside SAM, the rover's Sample Analysis at Mars machine, found?

A good guess would be that the rover found some kind of organic compound, containing oxygen, nitrogen, sulphur or hydrogen, which SAM tests for.

For background on SAM, there's a great piece from Spectroscopy Now, which describes how SAM takes its measurements. Among the wow points: The onboard oven can "heat samples to 1000°C using maximum power of just 40 W."

Also something to remember before making your guess, SAM already sniffed the Martian atmosphere and found "little to no methane," an important precursor chemical for life.